SF voters pass measure to drug test welfare recipients

[quesaisje]

Didn’t Florida try this like a decade ago, and it would up being a huge waste of time and money? I think only something like 2% of applicants tested positive.

This is arguably a sign that the policy worked. One intent of testing is to deter people from using drugs in the first place.

The studies and numbers that get invoked in these conversations usually come with the assumption that drug testing is only successful if loads of people are testing positive and getting thrown off of the rolls.

Obviously, this is speculative unless you have some sense of what the base rate of drug use is in this population. With that said, 2% is very low. You would struggle to find a population with so little drug use if you picked Americans for testing at random.

[quesaisje]

I sometimes get annoyed here that I put in some actual effort matching up different data, and I get responses based on anecdotes or 'feelings.'

Do you have any actual evidence that heroin users' lives spiral down due to the heroin use itself or is this just stereotyping based on stigma and to the degree that it is actually the case that heroin users' lives spiral that it isn't caused by getting arrested resulting in the loss of job/loss of housing.

This is about as delusional as hopping off of a plane without a parachute because you haven't seen a rigorous randomized control trial that measures whether outcomes are significantly better for jumpers who use one.

[quesaisje]

It is said that a visitor once came to the home of Nobel Prize–winning physicist Niels Bohr and, having noticed a horseshoe hung above the entrance, asked incredulously if the professor believed horseshoes brought good luck. “No,” Bohr replied, “but I am told that they bring luck even to those who do not believe in them.”

Call me whatever you want. It can't be worse than being the guy trying to argue that there's an unclear chain of cause and effect between heroin use and harm on a forum full of teenagers and young adults.

[quesaisje]

Drug testing welfare recipients has proven to cost more than it collects in clawed back benefits. This has been tried elsewhere this has failed wherever it's been introduced.

States waste hundreds of thousands on drug testing for welfare, but have little to show for it

This is arguably a sign that the policy worked. One intent of testing is to deter people from using drugs in the first place.

The studies and numbers that get invoked in these conversations usually come with the assumption that drug testing is only successful if loads of people are testing positive and getting thrown off of the rolls.

Obviously, this is speculative unless you have some sense of what the base rate of drug use is in this population. With that said, 2% is very low. You would struggle to find a population with so little drug use if you picked Americans for testing at random.

Never mind that this study is with regard to people eligible for a completely different benefit than the one that San Francisco is looking at. (edit: To elaborate, Pollack is talking about TANF, a benefit for families with children, while the San Francisco initiative is concerned not only with different benefits, but specifically limits its application to beneficiaries without dependents.)